I have a “classic” old Asus Eee 701 4G netbook that I like to dust off from time to time and monkey with. The size is definitely ultra-portable, and so is the keyboard which is, to be honest, why I don’t use it more often..

The biggest challenge with this thing though is screen resolution (well, and a 4GB SSD drive gets tight!). To that end, I did a bit of research and believe I finally have a solution that I’m happy with. Linux only though, Ubuntu NBR 10.04 in my case.

I’ve created two little scripts that both feature xrandr. The first is named “big” and contains one line:

xrandr --output LVDS1 --scale 1.28x1.28

The second is called “small” and looks rather similar:

xrandr --output LVDS1 --scale 1.00x1.00

I just keep ‘em in my home directory, but I did use the menu editor to add them to Accessories and then, from there, short-cuts up to Favorites for quick one-click access.

Big just makes things bigger. Basically scales the display from the default 800×480 to 1024×614’ish. I might squint a bit, but this is a much more usable resolution! Small just resets it back to the default.

Note, if you don’t want to squint, you could try the panning route instead. Try a script named “big-pan” with the following:

xrandr --output LVDS1 –panning 1024x600

Now stuff stays the original size, but you can pan around to get more effective screen size.